Last week, I reported that the Bergen County Freeholders introduced a $487 million budget, which represents a cut of about $623,688 over last year’s budget.

I also reported that the 2012 Freeholder budget is about $181,267 more than the $486.8 million budget submitted earlier this year by County Executive Kathleen Donovan.

That is true, but as Freeholder chairman and budget committee chair John Mitchell pointed out to me last week, those numbers don’t tell the whole story.

It’s a bit more complicated because the total budget numbers also include revenues that the county gets from grants and from the Division of Youth of Family Services. These revenues raise the total budget number, but do not affect the overall size of the county’s tax levy.

If you factor those revenues and expenses out and only count the expenses that county taxpayers bear, the Freeholder budget comes out to $32,500 less than what the County Executive proposed.

Where they made those cuts and where they restored funds makes for an interesting story. Click here for more details:

-The biggest winner in the Freeholder budget is the Sheriff’s Department, which saw a net gain of $1.27 million in salaries and overtime, including $1 million for deputies working at the county jail.

Most of the increase goes toward making up for some but not all of the $2.5 million that the sheriff’s department lost this year when it no longer qualified for housing immigration detainees at the jail.

To make up some of that money, the freeholders carved out $250,000 from the sheriff’s overtime budget as well as $30,000 in cleaning and janitorial expenses.

-One of the biggest cuts in the Freeholder budget was for the Department of Public Safety, which had its budget reduced by $707,440. That included a $360,000 cut to County Police salaries and a $338,440 trim to the Communication Center in Mahwah, plus another $7,000 for electricity and gas, ammunition and

-Other cuts included $206,000 from the county clerk’s office, mostly for printing. Clerk John Hogan said he was able to save about $200,000 in printing costs this year by pricing the contract for ballot printing with several printing companies, which had been one of his campaign promises.

Hogan’s aide Robert Pantina said the process was competitive but did not involve a formal bid, which is not required under state election law.

-Social Services had $166,200 trimmed from its administration expenses.

-The Parks Department budget was cut by $105, 287 mostly for salaries. However, the freeholders restored $5,000 that had been trimmed by the County Executive from the Rutgers Co-operative Extension program.

-The Prosecutor’s budget was cut by $120,000. Prosecutor John Molinelli agreed to give up $100,000 in salaries for vacant positions to enable the freeholders to restore that amount to the county’s mental health services.

-As previously reported, the seven non-profit agencies that receive funding from the county to provide treatment to mentally ill and homeless residents, had $318,860 of their funding restored.

-the relative lack of snowfall enable the freeholders to trim $250,000 from the Public Works department that had been earmarked for snowplowing plus salt and calcium.

Most of those cuts were moved over to increase the department’s budget by $100,000 for oil and gas costs and $105,287 for salaries in mosquito control.

The county has not had a major snowstorm since the big blizzard that socked the region over the Halloween weekend. DPW director Joe Crifasi, however, cautioned the freeholders that they still needed to be ready in case of another blizzard hits between October and December of this year.

All told, the freeholders cut $241,647 from the County Executive’s proposed budget and reallocated $2,429,147 for a total reduction of $32,500.

The freeholders introduced their budget on May 2. After a 30 days period for public comment, they are expected to adopt a final 2012 budget in June.